What would be wrong with us, and if it were, how would one fix it?

Personally, I think if that thing is wrong with us, so be it.

Yeah, I don't know. I was just making the argument. I don't have much deeper thoughts on the whole thing. I wanna see more arguments!

ita - an infinite number of posts back, didn't you think that if someone proposed we change the board's language to Swahili and only 8 of us could be arsed to vote, and 5 of us voted yes, then the board should be in Swahili?

I'm asking because, I think if we give Buffistas a range between 1 and 100 (or 2 and 100, or 10 and 100), we're going to come up with an average of 50 to 60. Theory of central tendency blah blah blah.

I don't know whether or not requiring 50 people to show up to vote before a vote can be counted is going to be a reasonable number. Maybe it is. Maybe it's an underestimate and maybe we have 200 unique users posting every day in the more popular threads. Maybe it's an overestimate, and we only have 50 unique users showing up in the popular threads. I have no confidence that averaging our favorite number out of one hundred is going to set a decent threshhold.

My own preference happens to skew low, but I would feel the same way if it skewed high.

Oh and the reason posters count more than lurkers in cases where we're voting on a new thread, is because lurkers don't post, and threads need posts to be active.

didn't you think that if someone proposed we change the board's language to Swahili and only 8 of us could be arsed to vote, and 5 of us voted yes, then the board should be in Swahili?

Absolutely. I'm a proponent for no MVT, obviously, and despite me asking, no one's pitched to me, so I still fail to get the point. I'd hoped to get the point, but instead will probably vote for the lowest MVT.

But whatever range we put, your argument implies the result will tend to the middle. So, 2-100 = about 50, and 20-65 = about 40. I don't think that average is a good solution, but I'm hardly going to argue at this point, since I'm bereft of better ideas.

Now I want to know about posters. For Natter, the posts on March 11 went from 8454 to 9149. I don't know how to find the number of unique posters except manually, so I'm not going to, but if someone else wants to.....

Big WROD to Cindy, who says what I was trying to get across yesterday:

I think making the upper number 100, is a way higher standard than anything we've ever had here.

If you take out Natter, Bitches, Buffy, Angel and Firefly - do you really think that 50 people would show up to vote about the threads they don't use?

Right. And you'll get to express them in a vote. But requiring a minimum for the topic to come to a vote, requiring a (any sized) minimum vote total for the vote to count, requiring a 50%+1 vote majority, for any topic to pass are already hurdles an issue has to pass. Are we going to make the minimum vote total for new issues insurrmountable? Because really, that's a big change in philosophy from before.

Jesse says:

Here's why I think 2 -- 100 is a good range: It runs all the way from meaningless (IMO) to the maximum number of voters we're likely to get ever (assuming the first two votes had the largest turnout).

Exactly. Again, I'll accept the 100 (which I think is way too high) if we move the lower limit to 2. Do we have a (hopefully non-bullshit) consensus on this?

Jesse again:

Oh yeah, what Sophia said is the other thing: we can make a decision, try it on for 6 months, and then revisit.

Would 6 months be too long? If we get less than MVT on several consecutive votes, wouldn't we want to change it sooner?

and again:

We've regularly gotten 100+ votes in thread-naming polls. We love to express our opinion! Especially if it's as easy as a couple of clicks. I think if only 20 people care enough to vote on something, there's something seriously wrong with us.

Do we know for sure that there was no repeat voting in the thread-naming polls? I hope you're right - that we'll regularly get at least 100 voters, but I still think the MVT should be a lot lower than 100.

I would hope that the barriers for an issue getting to a vote (discussion consensus, number of seconds etc.) would be high enough that we NEVER have a ballot in which we get less than the MVT.

Cindy says:

I'm asking because, I think if we give Buffistas a range between 1 and 100 (or 2 and 100, or 10 and 100), we're going to come up with an average of 50 to 60. Theory of central tendency blah blah blah.

I'm not sure about this. (Repeating myself from yesterday) The 32% that voted against MVT on the first ballot would vote for the lowest possible number, if their minds haven't changed. I think this would skew the outcome lower than 50, which is why I'm willing to accept 100 as the upper limit on the ballot. I'm assuming (hoping) that there aren't that many people that will vote for 100.

Here's a thought: I don't think I've seen one person argue that MVT should actually be as high as 100. I remember someone saying 65, I've obviously said 50, and then several other people have been for lower numbers -- even as low as zero. So, assuming that's a fair breakout of general trains of thought, the average number we come out with seems like it will come out much lower than the average of 2 and 100, no?

Edit: Crossposty with bicylcops! So we must both be right.

I have a concern about Item 4:

ITEM 4: SECONDS

a) Should more than one Buffista be needed in order to move something to formal discussion and vote?

b) if so, is there a minimum number of people who have to agree with the original proposer before a proposal moves to formal discussion? Put a number between 1 and 10 into this box, please: [ ] Put a number between 1 and 10 into this box, please: [ ]

If you respond NO on a) there is no mechanism within the question to indicate you should also answer b) anyway, in case a) passes despite your NO vote.

The lowest number should be "3" not "2", nor "1", nor "0".

It shouldn't be 0 - because people did vote for minimum vote total, (which I voted against, but still, I don't think it's fair to, in essence, negate the results of that ballot). It shouldn't be "1" because that's a meaningless minimum. It's shouldn't be "2" because we need a majority (50% +1 vote) for something to pass. The lowest number on the range should be 3.

I don't think that average is a good solution, but I'm hardly going to argue at this point, since I'm bereft of better ideas.

I don't either, and me too.

I still think 100 is a really arbitrary number, but I'm shutting up, because I'm realizing I don't care as much as I'm acting like I do.